The disclosure relates to catheters for use in medical procedures, such as electrophysiology diagnostic or therapy procedures, and manners for attaching dissimilar structures for catheter features.
Catheters are used for an ever-growing number of medical procedures, such as diagnostic, therapeutic, and ablative procedures, to name just a few examples. Typically, the catheter is manipulated through the patient's vasculature to the intended site, for example, a site within the patient's heart.
A typical electrophysiology catheter includes an elongate shaft and one or more electrodes on the distal end of the shaft. The electrodes may be used for ablation, diagnosis, or the like. One representative use of an electrophysiology catheter is for mapping the atrial regions of the heart, such as the pulmonary veins, which are often origination points or foci of atrial fibrillation. An electrophysiology mapping catheter may have a loop shape at its distal end, oriented in a plane generally orthogonal to the longitudinal axis of the catheter shaft, which allows the loop to surround ostia such as the pulmonary vein ostia, or to otherwise cover a greater surface area than other catheters such as linear catheters.